Making Textbooks Affordable: A Successful Initiative at a University Library

Transcription

1 Making Textbooks Affordable: A Successful Initiative at a University Library Stewart Baker Naomi Moy Wei Ma California State University, Dominguez Hills ALA Annual Conference, Anaheim CA June 23rd,

2 Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy Textbook Affordability and Student Success 2008 California Bureau of State Auditor Report indicates that CSU students are paying $812 per year for textbooks. Students don t buy all their required resources for learning Students stop out, drop out, don t perform to their academic potential, graduate at a slower rate. Affordability Affects Access to Excellence The CSU s Affordable Learning Solutions Campaign will deploy a multipronged approach to ease the financial burden for students. 2

3 Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy Making It Easier To Find Alternative Content Tools Technologies Policies Marketing & deployment strategies 3

4 Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy CSU Provides System Access to No- and Low-Cost Textbook Alternatives Open Textbooks: Over 2,000 FREE online textbooks are available through the AL$ website CSU Library ebooks: CSU systemwide electronic library collections provide students FREE access to ebooks Faculty-Authored Materials: Published and distributed in a variety of ways Lower Cost Publisher etextbooks: Digital rentals in the CSU 4

5 Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy Exemplary Campus Campaign Leadership Campus Campaign Team Communications Campaign Library Leadership in supporting faculty discovery and selection of no- and low-cost content Recognition of Faculty Leadership Collaboration with Bookstore 5

6 Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy CSUDH AL$ Summary in Numbers 127 Faculty Participants, Faculty Participants AY (all colleges represented) $490,666 Potential student savings Fall 2010 to Fall 2011 (6,918 students in 147 courses) $808,949 Bookstore savings to students from Fall 2010 to Spring

7 Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy Guiding Principles For Students and Faculty Choice Content Price Convenience Accessibility Benefits..Are Key Success Factors 7

8 Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy The Beginning Stages (Planning) Planning and Discussions CSU, Provost, Library, Deans Council Bookstore Campus Information Technology, Technology Advisory Committee Academic Senate & Senate Executive Committee 8

9 Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy The Beginning Stages (Announcing) Bringing AL$ to faculty College-specific workshops Special grant project Departmental meetings s to faculty introducing AL$ 9

10 Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy Lighting the Fire Bookstore finds and offers rentals even when CSUDH is the only Follett campus to offer a title Library matches its e-resources to courserequired textbooks and notifies faculty Faculty make specific search requests AL$ webpage, especially Faculty Showcase ( 10

11 Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy AL$ Home Page, CSUDH 11

12 Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy Faculty Showcase Example Page 12

13 Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy Quick Reserves Page 13

14 Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy Faculty Recognition Faculty Showcase with individual faculty pages listing resources and links to resource used 2011 and 2012 Faculty Recognition Receptions with certificates of recognition/appreciation given to each participant Also provide personally addressed invitations, s, etc. 14

15 Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy Campus Grants Campus supported additional resource purchase Award of two lottery fund grants totaling $50,000 for purchase of electronic resources Presidential Creative Initiative Program grant provided $11,000 for 15 ipads for student checkout. 15

16 Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy 2012 and Beyond Building ebook collections Patron driven acquisitions (PDA) model Building faculty communities CSU digital literacy group CSUDH brown bags lunches Faculty teaching & learning conferences 16

17 Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy 2012 and Beyond (cont.) Resource development and MERLOT Faculty stipends to create online learning resources Principles of Biology Collaborative project of Nature Publishing and CSU faculty Born-digital, low-cost, interactive textbook 17

18 Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy Our Primary Resources Library focus on resources free to students Ebrary ebooks EBSCO ebooks Publisher direct ebooks Articles from subscription databases OERs* found in MERLOT Low-cost books or digital books with value-added online resources (*Open Educational Resources) 18

19 Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy Digital Rentals: Who s Playing? Vendors Serve all CSU Campuses CourseSmart: Independent bookstores Café Scribe: Follett bookstores NookStudy: Barnes & Noble bookstores Cengage Learning: 27% of higher ed market 19

20 Making Textbooks Affordable Wei Ma Making ebooks Available for Use Loading ebook MARC records to the OPAC MarcEdit: an OpenSource MARC editing utility developed in 2000 by Terry Reese from Oregon State University OpenURL link resolver (SFX) to cross-link ebooks from various resources WorldCat Article databases OPAC etc. 20

21 Making Textbooks Affordable Wei Ma Making ebooks Available for Use (cont.) Electronic Reserves as a supplement for content not available elsewhere Journal Articles Book Chapters Direct links from AL$ web pages Publisher websites Author websites Software downloads 21

22 Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker Presenting your Initiative on the Web Why build up an online presence? Visibility Incentive Assessment Connect with Students 22

23 Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker Options for the Web Hand-coded System (Static) Hand-coded System (Dynamic) Open-Source Software Suite Commercial Software Suite 23

24 Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker Options for the Web (Hand-Coding) Hand-coded System (Static) Good for small initiatives High maintenance HTML-only means no bells and whistles Hand-coded System (Dynamic) Allows for high levels of customization Specialized skills required Potential for direct faculty data input 24

25 Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker Options for the Web (Software Suites) Open-source Software Suites Free Some specialized skills required Probably no troubleshooting support Faculty handle data input 25

26 Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker Open-source Software Suites WordPress (Best with BuddyPress) MediaWiki Social Networking Suites Elgg Xoops Mahara Full list at Wikipedia: 26

27 Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker Options for the Web (Software Suites) (cont.) Commercially-available Software Suites Easy set-up; help when you need it Costly Faculty handle data input 27

28 Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker Commercially-available Software Suites PeopleSoft Social Networking Suites SocialEngine WebNetwork Full list at Wikipedia: 28

29 Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker Our Approach Dynamic, hand-coded set of websites PHP/MySQL for data display and input Repurposed existing code from a similar project Input handled by library employees (i.e. Naomi) 29

30 Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker Our Approach (cont.) Back-end Showcase input tool Front-end Faculty Showcase Quick Reserves tab 30

31 Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker Our Approach (cont.) Planned updates Normalize data entry Create searchable resource database for faculty Improve web design 31

32 Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker MERLOT CSU Chancellor s Office initiative Resource-sharing community for faculty and other educators 32

33 Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker MERLOT (cont.) Peer Reviews Submitted resources undergo a peer reviewing process Multi-stage process Users with reviewed items can opt to receive letters of review for tenure purposes 33

34 Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker MERLOT (cont.) User-submitted Resources Anyone can join and contribute Anyone can comment and rate resources Option to create assignments for resources 34

35 Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker MERLOT (cont.) User-submitted Resources Anyone can join and contribute Anyone can comment and rate resources Option to create assignments for resources 35

36 Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker MERLOT (cont.) Issues to consider Anyone can join and contribute Small portion of active users Small portion of materials reviewed Solution to issues Sign up! 36

37 Enabling Student Affordability Accessibility Success Choice 37